#20 ALL TIME MOUNTAIN MOTOR PRO STOCK DRIVER – CHARLIE PEPPERS

SPARTANBURG, SC -- Call Charlie Peppers the ultimate underdog. But you couldn’t have convinced him of that in the three decades that he competed in the IHRA Mountain Motor Pro Stock division.

Nobody could make a low-buck Ford run like Peppers, the tobacco-chewing man from Auburn, Ga.

Peppers never reached a single final round but he didn’t need to. His threat to win and never-say-die attitude left more of a legacy than mere wins and losses. In other words, paired against 15 other like-funded teams, Peppers would have gotten his share.

Peppers began running Pro Stock in 1970 when it first started and raced until just a few years ago. He started in the IHRA in 1972.

“I just enjoyed doing it,” Peppers said. “If I didn’t I probably would have quit a long time before I did. It just really got more expensive and faster than I could handle.”

Initially Peppers didn’t care for the unlimited displacement rule put forth in 1977, but he grew to like it.

“It was fine but I didn’t really like the idea at first because I felt that it would make it so much more expensive,” Peppers said.

That’s why when the opportunity to squelch the engine sizes came around in the early 1990s, Peppers interjected his opinion at a driver’s meeting.

“We had a meeting in Darlington once and I tried to get them to make the limit about 600 inches or so, but they didn’t. They made it about 814 inches and I knew from that point on that it would be tough for me.”

But that didn’t stop Peppers from giving it his all.

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